The good news is that our bikes are ready for production! The other news is that we are on hold until the tariffs are sorted out. We are still shipping gear and parts should you need any for your Pello, please check out the Gear page.
Feel free to jump on our waitlist if you’d like to be notified when we’re back in action.
If you're interested in the backstory please continue reading…
Pello is a very small company that focuses on quality and customer service. We experienced a bit of a boom during Covid when folks were buying bikes because it was the perfect social distancing activity. This was great as it meant so many more kiddos (and parents) were riding. However, once global bicycle demand increased to a point where bicycle factories could no longer keep up with production, we were faced with a 3 year wait for our bicycle production. When we received our bikes after waiting 3 years, the bicycle market was not as strong as it was when we placed the order. In fact, the bicycle industry fell into a bit of a sleep mode where sales slowed way down. This was largely due because so many bikes were in the queue to be made finally became available only to find the demand was no longer there. This resulted in an industry wide surplus of bikes and not as much demand for them.
We cautiously watched the market and our sales as we began working on our next generation of Pello Bikes. This next gen is our best yet, with new drivetrains, updated cockpit and a host of other cool things! In August of last year we had finalized all the updates except for one part, the Chainguard. The chainguard is the part that covers the chain on our smaller pedal bikes. Updating our drivetrains meant our previous chainguard no longer fit. This meant we needed a new one. Unfortunately there is no supplier that makes a quality chainguard to fit our new design. We looked at several options but they just didn’t align with the quality we are used to. After a few weeks of endless searching for suppliers with no results a friend suggested we 3D print them. We’re familiar with 3D printing for prototyping but not for production, and thought let's see what's available? This 3D journey proved to be a good one. It resulted in a wonderfully designed chainguard but it took some time to understand the technology and how to use it for our purposes. Several months into R&D and we finally nailed it! Our chainguard is ready for production and that meant all the bikes were ready to be produced! We were so happy we could finally bring our updated Pello’s to kiddos all over the country! In fact, we submitted the order to our builder right before this year’s spring break. Being on spring break is, well, a break, and we didn't pay too much attention to the news. When we got back from break is when the new increased tariffs went into effect. Our bikes are produced in Taiwan, a country known for its quality in building bicycles. Hearing this news we were like oh man this is a large increase in cost. Then a few days later the tariffs were suspended for 90 days. Again, we were like ok let's do this; except producing bikes takes between 3-4 months to gather all the parts, make the bikes and then ship them to our HQ in Richmond, VA, in the bicycle production world you are only as fast as your slowest part. So that doesn't work either.
Given all this info it is with a heavy heart we’ve decided to hold off on making our bikes until we can see a more clear picture of what the tariffs will look like.
We currently have a few bikes left in stock and have put them on sale in order to make room for the new bikes.
Thank you again for your interest in Pello. We truly appreciate you and would love to be there as your kiddo discovers the joy of cycling.
